A typical home audio/video equipment set up includes a number of components. For example, a radio receiver, a CD player, a pair of speakers, a television, a VCR, a tape deck, and alike. Each of these components are connected to each other via a set of wires. One component is usually the central component of the home audio/video system. This is usually the radio receiver, or the tuner. The tuner has a number of specific inputs for coupling the other components. The tuner has a corresponding number of control buttons or control switches which provide a limited degree of controllability and interoperability for the components. The control buttons and control switches are usually located on the front of the tuner. In many cases, some, or all, of these buttons and switches are duplicated on a hand held remote control unit. A user controls the home audio/video system by manipulating the buttons and switches on the front of the tuner, or alternatively, manipulating buttons on the hand held remote control unit.
This conventional home audio/video system paradigm has become quite popular. As consumer electronic devices become more capable and more complex, the demand for the latest and most capable devices has increased. As new devices emerge and become popular, the devices are purchased by consumers and "plugged" into their home audio/video systems. Generally, the latest and most sophisticated of these devices are quite expensive (e.g., digital audio tape recorders, DVD players, digital camcorders, and alike). As a consumer purchases new devices, most often, the new device is simply plugged into the system alongside the pre-existing, older devices (e.g., cassette tape deck, CD player, and the like). The new device is plugged into an open input on the back of the tuner, or some other device couple to the tuner. The consumer (e.g., the user) controls the new device via the control buttons on the tuner, via the control buttons and control switches on the front of the new device itself, or via an entirely new, separate, respective remote control unit for the new device.
As the number of new consumer electronics devices for the home audio/video system have grown and as the sophistication and capabilities of these devices have increased, a number of problems with the conventional paradigm have emerged. One such problem is incompatibility between devices in the home audio/video system. Consumer electronic devices from one manufacturer often couple to an audio/video system in a different manner than similar devices from another manufacturer. For example, a tuner made by one manufacturer may not properly couple with a television made by another manufacturer. Within conventional home audio/video systems, there is not a standardized way of coupling devices such that they interact predictably and reliably. This is especially true in the case of coupling devices from different manufacturers.
Another problem is the lack of standardized methods of enabling and facilitating communication between the devices coupled within the home audio/video system. For example, different devices often include their own unique formats for enabling communication with other devices. Devices from different manufacturers often use different formats for communication. For example, a VCR from one manufacturer is often unable to communicate with the television from another manufacturer. In the past, there existed no standardized method for interconnecting various devices into a seamless home audio/video network.
The emergence of networking and interface technology (e.g., IEEE 1394 serial communication bus and the wide spread adoption of digital systems) offers prospects for correcting these problems. The dynamic capability of 1394 makes it an idea physical media for interconnecting audio/video devices in a home network. The IEEE 1394 technology provides an architecture capable of offering a flexible distributed peer-to-peer software framework that consumer electronics companies can use to develop home audio/video devices and applications/features for those devices that were not feasible previously. Such applications/features include true plug-and-play, fully automated device self-configuration, and the like.
While the emergence of powerful networking and interface technology (e.g., IEEE 1394 serial communication bus and the wide spread adoption of digital systems) offers prospects for correcting the above problems, there is still no coherent, open, extensible architecture which can provide for a standardized, intelligent, self configuring, easily extensible architecture which facilitates the efficient transmission and reception of data messages between various components/devices of the home audio/video network.
There is no standardized architecture for ensuring reliable, efficient communication between the various software and hardware components within the home audio/video network. For example, while various home audio/video network solutions involve the use of IEEE 1394 as the basic transport layer of a network communications system, none provide a system for ensuring the seamless transmission and reception of data messages between the various software/hardware components within the home audio/video network, especially in those cases where the various software components may be distributed among different hardware platforms (e.g., devices) coupled to the home audio/video network.